This has to be my new favorite channel. As a young IT administrator I just adore seeing what the networks of the enterprise used to look like all those years ago. Keep up the awesome videos!
You gave it a taste when you mismatched the memory, it tested you by rejecting the era appropriate disc drive. Now its lust is insatiable, it yearns for the jank.
That's really cool! I remember my father talking about those x86 cards for the Sun servers and Workstations. If my memory is right, I think he had one in his Workstation that he used to write software on for the various projects he worked on. Super cool to to actually see one! Sun has a special place in my heart not only because my father loved talking about them and how superior they were to the x86 hardware and software technology of that time, but my first SysAdmin job in the world of UNIX were Sun servers running Solaris 10. I remember those LLMs. Although, we called them ILOMs, but the same thing: remote management of the physical server. Cool stuff!
Hey Clab, I recently came across your page as a recommendation because I like watching server/enterprise hardware videos. I've always built my homelab servers from old parts on eBay. I have to say you had me rooting for your 16GB and CPU upgrade to boot. I remember what it feels like taking a chance on that old hardware that doesn't have a ton of online support to research before hand. Would love to see more enterprise hardware/software stuff!
Thanks! More to come. I've got some minor upgrades for some old Dell enterprise servers coming that I actually run full time that might turn into a video.
Found this series of videos through the algorithm. Awesome content! As a current sysadmin who was in high school back when Sun was peak, I've always been fascinated with the concept of thin clients. My first tech job back in 04 was managing a citrix metaframe cluster (oooh fun times!). Can't wait for part 4!
what a cliffhanger! When I started at TI, vice president, said they used to work in the x86 business and I never knew why they would even try that! But this makes so much sense haha!
TI used to make licensed 386 and 486 chips, as well as 387 co-processors IIRC. They may even have done one of the AMD-licensed 586 ones too. But after Pentium launched they dropped out of that market. Too bad! I'm a huge fan of TI stuff. I use their microcontrollers in my designs all the time, and I love their calculators (I have a pretty large collection of them). Definitely need a TI computer of some sort to complete my fanboy mania.
This is what we imagined client-server or ASP would be like in 1999. Thanks for making it happen now. Would love to see some ancient stuff like a 3/50 or 3/60 talking to Linux!
I love it - I think we also used to have Windows XP in a window on the Sun Ray. As I was working almost exclusively on Solaris this was perfect as I could access my Mail or Office when I needed to but otherwise could stick to my Solaris Desktop. You could even copy and paste between Solaris and the XP windows which was great to exchange logs, commands or the likes - best of both worlds, from my point of view :-) 18:13 oh those wrist straps… I think they were in almost any Sun branded hardware package in the day… I‘ve completely lost count of how many tons of those I‘ve encountered during my career 😂
I totally forgot to cover things like copy/paste. The more I got into this the more I realized you could deep dive just on the Windows Connector stuff.
Excellent video - used hundreds of these (financial customer) reliable, secure and for their time -fast! There was a marvellous video where a user starts a application and - has to go to another location takes his card out of the Sun Ray and drives 80 miles to the other office. Plugs in his card into the Sun Ray and the same application appears on the screen- commonplace now - but it was like magic then !
You missed out on the pleasure of building a jumpstart server. The hardware was expensive when new we would have just had Sun send out a new part ;-) Nice to see someone still playing with the hardware and Solaris
This channel reminds me of all the shenanigans we did back in the early 2000s when we were researching remote desktop protocols and virtual desktops. I’ll watch these videos as long as you keep messing with this stuff.
I literally can't stop watching videos about sun microsystems, it is all so interesting, I never lived this period of computing (I'm just 21), damn I never fully lived windows xp era either lol, but wow it is so interesting to see how unix systems were and how much research and development went into all of this, it's sad that solaris is slowly dying and will never swee something like this again, unless windows decides to create thin clients.....which would be insane
Agreed! I really need to cook up more Sun ideas for future videos, it's really fun to play with that gear. There are indeed thin clients these days, checkout Wyse Thin Clients. But hardware has gotten so cheap that there is far less reliance on the server, unlike the case with the Sun Ray setup here.
no harm intended 😂. mostly meant ancient in terms of the browser hoops you have to jump through to access it. wasn't too long ago I had it working on Windows 10.
Great vid! RDP has setting for # of colors. I wonder if the sun client is limited or like the Windows client you can specify up to 32bit color You might check to see if there's a newer version of Idrac for your 520's. Newer versions work better with current Java or you can use HTML5. Might not be available for the 520 but worth checking. Keep the videos coming please.
thanks! I tried setting 24 bit color but it didn't make a difference. I probably need to play around with the settings more. yeah my dell r720 has an idrac version which works fine in modern browsers, haven't dove into updating the r510 yet, on the list. more to come!
I don't get why they couldn't add the RDP client into the SunRay firmware.. at least then the tons of SunRays that are still around on ebay would have *some* use nowadays.
If i see correctly, on the PCI Card are two additional connectors. one is the 34pin Floppy connector and other 40pin should be the smaller version of the ide connector. You find this connector in old Notebooks before SATA. Your IDE CD-Drive from the other Server is may incompatible. The Selection of the Drive Master/Slave is mostly flashed in the Firmware but it can be switched by unsolder of one specific PIN on the connector in the Drive or you flash the firmware.
The mini-IDE you're thinking of in laptops was actually 44 pins, because it had to provide power as well all in one connector. I have one in my NEC Versa 4000C laptop from the early 90s.
SunPCi was always cursed! You could also try building a modern FreeRDP client for Solaris 10 and seeing what kind of performance you can get for modern Windows computers. Or Linux ones!
Would absolutely love to have a play on that thing! You should totally allow some of your subscribers SSH access to regular user accounts so we can play around but not hurt anything :D For example, if it has a working C compiler (or GCC can be loaded) I have written some programs to calculate Pi to lots of digits, it'd be fun to let it rip on that SunFire and see it shining as it crunches numbers hard.
A big hospital in my area still uses sun ray 2 devices pretty much everywhere with windows 10 connections. Their IT guy once gave me two of them for free sealed and never used
This is super awesome! Great job. Haven't got time to mess with my sunray at the moment. Got done with a Dell competition lol. I may send a link to the linkedin for the reply lol... But yeah! Great video!
Hi !! You are my hero! I worked with this stuff and is impossible find sun/Solaris hardware cheap here in Brazil. Yesterday I brought a sun blade 100. R$500,00.. about $100,00.. includes a sun mouse and keyboard . So, you are the guy that today does what I want to do, If I have access to the hardware.
@@clabretro Yes, people charge a lot because is a "sun related" thing. Im also building my homelab rack. 2 x HP ML110 G7(Ill run esxi) 1 x 16TB HP microserver(xigmaNAS) 1x Dell powerconnect 2824, 1x Watchguard XTM5(running PFSENSE) everything behind an UPS with an external baterry module(max 1 hour on batteries).
Though Meta/WinFrame is cursed in and of itself. They horsetraded to get other people to implement remote desktop for them, lmao. "Here, have a copy of the NT source code, but only if we get to use your remote desktop technology!!" 😂
20:30 that is actually supposed to be like that. It is there to provide some springiness. Since what makes screws not go loosen over time isn't a large amount of torque, but rather that the screw remains under tension. Since tension will prevent it from continuing to loosen at any meaningful pace. Unlike a stiff joint that only needs the screw to crack loose once and then its free to vibrate further. So by making the bracket have an integrated spring (of debatable quality) will ensure that the cards remains firmly attached in more vibration prone environments. (like during shipping) Now, not all brackets have this feature. I guess it looks ugly to some users, confuses others, or perhaps just adds manufacturing cost. But when it is there, it is intentional and serves a useful purpose.
Lol i was once talking about a x86 add-in card for the first Macs with caddy CDrom drives, and how a apple store near me had a mac and PC in the store window, with some kind of setup to show the mac could boot itself, and then boot windows, quicker than a bare metal PC doing it, and one of the folks who built those cards reached out in a comment and shared a bunch of pictures I thought it was a mass produced unit, turns out they only made about 500 all told. It wasn't a apple product, it was made by a company in the UK Its one of the few things outside of exotic radio gear that you struggle to find info on, i don't think many survived
@clabretro one oddity near me is a lot of odd older Dell PCs, Motorola phone stuff, and a few of the early iPhone prototypes, they were all built near me, with the exception of the iPhone that was maybe tested here? (In scotland) A guy who reviews old PCs on here got a 30yo Dell still unused in its box from the Greenock factory and did a unboxing, I managed to send the video to a local group with a lot of the folk who worked at the plant, they were all chipping in seeing their initials on the QC stickers, or laughing at the squint lettering and tagging in the guy who worked that machine! 🤣 even the local MP was joining in, he'd been a union rep there, started him on the road to politics. Quite the trip down memory lane for them, and a ton of random info and questions answered for the video guy :)
haha good question. 12 of them or something, it was an as-is ebay lot I couldn't pass up. came out to something like $13 usd each (basically 2008 thrifting prices). they're Japanese units but it's okay to run them on 120v for short game sessions. and the power supplies can be replaced or modded. about half of them work just fine, the other half work but have broken gdroms. I fixed up 3 of them with gdemu units and noctua fan mods. had dreams of selling them but never got around to it.
I would give an AMD Geode a try in this one. It should have the same socket as this Athlon (462), and even less power consumption. This card looks very nice indeed.
Try Solaris 8 , I do like the idea of setting up a zone like one person suggested and that could spawn a different series of videos . Zones were all the rage before docker came along .
Agreed, I'd like to cover zones in a video (I know next to nothing about them, so it'd be a fun excuse to learn). I did try on a physical machine in Solaris 8 with the same result, so I'm going to source a new CPU for the board.
28:56 I think you are dealing with HW issues. Last I remember using these, they were only compatible with IDE based Sparc-5 and Sparc-10 (maybe with Sparc 20/40) workstations and not with servers. I think you were supposed to connect a dedicated IDE drive directly to the card.
I wonder if it was a licencing issue because Windows NT 3.1 was ported to run on Intel x86 PC compatible, PC-98, DEC Alpha, and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 was ported to UltraSPARC and PowerPC, but not released to the public. Would be interesting to get a copy of that Windows and then there wouldn't be a need for the external card. Of course NT 4.0 dropped support for UltraSPARC. I'm thinking running Linux KVM with Qemu and NT 3.51 😅
I have a SunPCi IIIPro in my SunBlade 1500 (and had in a SB2500 before) and it works just fine with Solaris 10, even with the current system date. I suspect you are likely missing some patches. My system run relatively current KU 150400-48, SUNWspci3 version is 3.2.2. The SB1500 and SB2500 are very similar systems to your v240 so I would not expect any issue with the HW compatibility.
Thanks for that extra info, that's really helpful. Last night I got Solaris 8 and SUNWspci3 3.2.1 running on a V440 and it was exactly the same failure mode (x86 board wouldn't respond to the driver). That, coupled with your info and the fact that I did see it work *once* on Solaris 10 leads me to believe it's hardware failure on the SunPCi board. I'm going to start by sourcing a new CPU.
@@clabretro one more idea: I seem to remember that SunPCi boards require some minimal version of OBP of its host, regardless of the Solaris version the host is running. The most recent version for most sun4u systems is OBP 4.30.4.a (which is what my SB1500 sports now), so maybe you need to update the firmware of your servers.
bought with 12 my first sunray 2 client. Had no idea what i need to run, thought i can throw a minimal linux on it, to connect via rdp to my windows server 2008 host, powered by a Sun X4200
Is this basically just like running rdesktop on Solaris from the thin client? Strange you needed the Solaris server in the middle, though maybe that's how sun planned to make money
Wow, that system time error. I get the general utility of having a sanity-check for an admin accidentally typing, eg, 2096 instead of 2006... but how low is that threshold?! I guess it's at least outside of the service life of the hardware it's installed in. Still, that other commenter mentioned a hospital using Sun Rays connecting to Windows 10. It's probably some other way of running Windows 10 rather than one of these PCi cards forced to upgrade, but I still wonder if that check in the setup software causes that hospital any issues.
Love your videos! I get such a heavy dose of nostalgia watching. I used to be a UNIX sysadmin back in the day. More Irix and AIX and less Solaris but still UNIX goodness makes me happy.
Looking forward to it. I spent a big chunk of my career as a sysadmin and manager of sysadmin teams with IBM Power systems starting somewhere in the Power 5 era. Excelent machines.
That is cheaper than I would have imagined! Was that for one processor and a single stick of RAM, BYO storage, by any chance?@@clabretro or did they actually list devices in configurations that were not imaginary? First intro to *nix the 90's SPARCstations. Didn't see what they were running in the cursed 90's mishmash of server racks. Was a primarily unix and apple environment though x86 machines were around too. That poor sysadmiin.
This would've been the "large" configuration for $6,495: web.archive.org/web/20030621084857/store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml?catid=100055 2 processors and 2GB of ram.
Cheers! That is actually not too bad, especially compared to the 'small' 4/5U systems. Swings and roundabouts I suppose, especially when it comes to fast local storage. Don't know the state of SAN controllers at the time. Looking forward to next installment!
You should try to setup a Solaris 9 zone and pass the pci card into the zone, this way you don’t lose the work on sol10 Edit just make sure you use a whole root zone and not a sparse root zone
Zones are neat but I don't think they would resolve a driver incompatibility. Like with Linux containers, a Solaris 9 zone running under Solaris 10 would still use the Solaris 10 kernel.
I'd be very surprised if there's not some way to get terminal services running on Windows 2000 Pro, if it runs on the Server version. It would likely just involve tricking it to think it was the Server version, like I would trick Windows 7 Home. That said, is there really any reason not to just install the Server edition? Would that game not work on the Server edition? Did you just not want to take the time, since you were already going to have to do a Windows install for the video anyway?
It would seem weird to me for it to get that far into Windows 11 but there not be some way to get it to work. Maybe you could change some settings to use the older login window, or even force it to use the Basic display adapter or something.
Hey. I just had the same issue with Windows 11 when was connecting to the Hyper-V VM using an enhanced mode (which I believe was just RDP). In order to fix this, I disabled Windows Hello security stuff, which was just a PIN-code login in my case
open the Settings Menu go to system Remote desktop then Avanced in blue text then uncheck Use NLM box and apply it that will let you use the XP era login settings on win 10 and 11
You can change the Windows 10 Security NLM on the remote desktop Tap Uncheck the Secure connection box that's require a secure connection then apply that change
@@clabretro As I recall the Athlon XPs were the last CPUs that didn't come with real, decent thermal protection (as in, if it gets hot, it dials things back, rather than just hard-cutting power or blowing the CPU - CPUs afterwards all had something like that by default, based around how Intel implemented it). IIRC back in the day there was usually an insocket temp sensor on the mobo that was used, and the Athlons had a 'rough and ready' temp sensor on the CPU die - but not all mobos supported it (and I doubt the SunPCI would have). So there's a pretty real risk that it toasted itself if the thermal paste/pads are past their useful life. Of course, this potential disappointment leads to the more exciting question of "Is the CPU on the SunPCI socketed, and can the CPU be replaced with something faster?"
I ended up pulling the Athlon in a short patreon vid, and it's possible it fried, thermal situation wasn't great. Good news is I have a couple replacements on the way... so hopefully once that's sorted I'll have a "successful" video showing it working! It did indeed have a temp sensor under the CPU. I'll also be testing the fan assembly before running any replacements to make sure that's all good.
I feel like I missed my prime. Modern day sysadmin is boring. I got started into sysadmining as soon as this stuff was already mostly out the door. I kinda want to hit up ebay now, but I'm sure my wife would murder me if any more old electronics come into the house! :)
NLM was not arround during XP Days so disable it by doing what I said in prev Comment I'm a I.T professional from that era and still working so I know the correct settings
Cursed computing: I use a Windows 10 laptop to rdp into a windows 7 Server VM (one core, sandy bridge, 4gb) in order to vnc to an ancient embedded PC running good ol' windows xp that runs a giant pharmaceutical freeze drier. And the other computer running it can't be remoted into because it's running Windows 2000. 🤮
This has to be my new favorite channel. As a young IT administrator I just adore seeing what the networks of the enterprise used to look like all those years ago. Keep up the awesome videos!
Thank you! Definitely more videos coming.
You gave it a taste when you mismatched the memory, it tested you by rejecting the era appropriate disc drive. Now its lust is insatiable, it yearns for the jank.
I have awakened the beast
Love your videos man, can't wait for the next part!
Thank you!
That's really cool! I remember my father talking about those x86 cards for the Sun servers and Workstations. If my memory is right, I think he had one in his Workstation that he used to write software on for the various projects he worked on. Super cool to to actually see one!
Sun has a special place in my heart not only because my father loved talking about them and how superior they were to the x86 hardware and software technology of that time, but my first SysAdmin job in the world of UNIX were Sun servers running Solaris 10. I remember those LLMs. Although, we called them ILOMs, but the same thing: remote management of the physical server. Cool stuff!
Very cool! Sun had all sorts of LOM variants: LOM, ALOM, ILOM (probably more)
Hey Clab, I recently came across your page as a recommendation because I like watching server/enterprise hardware videos. I've always built my homelab servers from old parts on eBay. I have to say you had me rooting for your 16GB and CPU upgrade to boot. I remember what it feels like taking a chance on that old hardware that doesn't have a ton of online support to research before hand. Would love to see more enterprise hardware/software stuff!
Thanks! More to come. I've got some minor upgrades for some old Dell enterprise servers coming that I actually run full time that might turn into a video.
@@clabretro I'm just one guy, but I'd love to see that.
@@clabretroI would also love to see it. I love your videos
Found this series of videos through the algorithm. Awesome content! As a current sysadmin who was in high school back when Sun was peak, I've always been fascinated with the concept of thin clients. My first tech job back in 04 was managing a citrix metaframe cluster (oooh fun times!). Can't wait for part 4!
Oh I'm sure that citrix cluster was tons of fun haha. Thanks for watching!
what a cliffhanger! When I started at TI, vice president, said they used to work in the x86 business and I never knew why they would even try that! But this makes so much sense haha!
Sorry about the cliff hanger! We'll get it working eventually haha
TI used to make licensed 386 and 486 chips, as well as 387 co-processors IIRC. They may even have done one of the AMD-licensed 586 ones too. But after Pentium launched they dropped out of that market. Too bad! I'm a huge fan of TI stuff. I use their microcontrollers in my designs all the time, and I love their calculators (I have a pretty large collection of them). Definitely need a TI computer of some sort to complete my fanboy mania.
I really hope the programmer that made the system time error sees this. What a cool setup. Thank you for sharing.
Agreed! Thanks for watching.
This is what we imagined client-server or ASP would be like in 1999. Thanks for making it happen now. Would love to see some ancient stuff like a 3/50
or 3/60 talking to Linux!
Ha, wish I had one of those. Thanks for watching!
I love it - I think we also used to have Windows XP in a window on the Sun Ray. As I was working almost exclusively on Solaris this was perfect as I could access my Mail or Office when I needed to but otherwise could stick to my Solaris Desktop. You could even copy and paste between Solaris and the XP windows which was great to exchange logs, commands or the likes - best of both worlds, from my point of view :-)
18:13 oh those wrist straps… I think they were in almost any Sun branded hardware package in the day… I‘ve completely lost count of how many tons of those I‘ve encountered during my career 😂
I totally forgot to cover things like copy/paste. The more I got into this the more I realized you could deep dive just on the Windows Connector stuff.
Excellent video - used hundreds of these (financial customer) reliable, secure and for their time -fast! There was a marvellous video where a user starts a application and - has to go to another location takes his card out of the Sun Ray and drives 80 miles to the other office.
Plugs in his card into the Sun Ray and the same application appears on the screen- commonplace now - but it was like magic then !
You missed out on the pleasure of building a jumpstart server. The hardware was expensive when new we would have just had Sun send out a new part ;-) Nice to see someone still playing with the hardware and Solaris
I've got one! I run a Solaris x86 VM in Proxmox as a jumpstart server. Would be cool to set up a physical one just for fun though.
This channel reminds me of all the shenanigans we did back in the early 2000s when we were researching remote desktop protocols and virtual desktops. I’ll watch these videos as long as you keep messing with this stuff.
thanks!
Awesome channel. I can’t believe how much you upload, always a joy to see it pop up in my feed
Thanks!
I literally can't stop watching videos about sun microsystems, it is all so interesting, I never lived this period of computing (I'm just 21), damn I never fully lived windows xp era either lol, but wow it is so interesting to see how unix systems were and how much research and development went into all of this, it's sad that solaris is slowly dying and will never swee something like this again, unless windows decides to create thin clients.....which would be insane
Agreed! I really need to cook up more Sun ideas for future videos, it's really fun to play with that gear. There are indeed thin clients these days, checkout Wyse Thin Clients. But hardware has gotten so cheap that there is far less reliance on the server, unlike the case with the Sun Ray setup here.
This channel is like my ultimate geek fantasy lab, always thought the sun systems were so cool.
The fact you called that version of iDrac ancient, made me feel ancient
no harm intended 😂. mostly meant ancient in terms of the browser hoops you have to jump through to access it. wasn't too long ago I had it working on Windows 10.
Dude I love this content, keep it coming!
Thanks for watching! More on the way!
great work! looking forward to seeing more struggles to bring the SunPC card back to life
Awesome dude, was waiting for this one! Keep up the great work!
Thank you! Wish I could've gotten that SunPCi working all in one video but we'll tackle it eventually.
Great vid! RDP has setting for # of colors. I wonder if the sun client is limited or like the Windows client you can specify up to 32bit color You might check to see if there's a newer version of Idrac for your 520's. Newer versions work better with current Java or you can use HTML5. Might not be available for the 520 but worth checking. Keep the videos coming please.
thanks! I tried setting 24 bit color but it didn't make a difference. I probably need to play around with the settings more.
yeah my dell r720 has an idrac version which works fine in modern browsers, haven't dove into updating the r510 yet, on the list.
more to come!
Don't apologize that there's going to more videos, I look forward to more videos on this stuff!
Ha, thank you! More to come!
I don't get why they couldn't add the RDP client into the SunRay firmware.. at least then the tons of SunRays that are still around on ebay would have *some* use nowadays.
Proud to say i was working for sunray at sun Microsystems 😊
cool? what did you do there?
YES! cant wait to watch this!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this goes the way you want it to ... THX for working ;)
It might not have turned out well but still a great video.
Thanks! Was hoping to show it all working but it'll take a little more effort!
you fired up WC3 and you had my sub good sir
thanks for the sub!
So cool to show off this (definitely cursed) entreprise stuff, real original :)!
If i see correctly, on the PCI Card are two additional connectors. one is the 34pin Floppy connector and other 40pin should be the smaller version of the ide connector. You find this connector in old Notebooks before SATA. Your IDE CD-Drive from the other Server is may incompatible. The Selection of the Drive Master/Slave is mostly flashed in the Firmware but it can be switched by unsolder of one specific PIN on the connector in the Drive or you flash the firmware.
The mini-IDE you're thinking of in laptops was actually 44 pins, because it had to provide power as well all in one connector. I have one in my NEC Versa 4000C laptop from the early 90s.
Had to chuckle when you tried to pop a Sata disc drive into an IDE spot
Exactly. As soon as I saw the SATA connector I was like. Dude that's an ancient sun box. No way it can have a SATA connector on it.
A man can dream 😂. The whole time I was like... there's no way this will work haha.
2:54 - 😲 wow... I have installed a bunch of Citrix thing back then in 2003 or so... Works pretty well
SunPCi was always cursed! You could also try building a modern FreeRDP client for Solaris 10 and seeing what kind of performance you can get for modern Windows computers. Or Linux ones!
Not a bad idea!
Would absolutely love to have a play on that thing! You should totally allow some of your subscribers SSH access to regular user accounts so we can play around but not hurt anything :D
For example, if it has a working C compiler (or GCC can be loaded) I have written some programs to calculate Pi to lots of digits, it'd be fun to let it rip on that SunFire and see it shining as it crunches numbers hard.
Agreed! I've been thinking about something like that and might be able to come up with a plan eventually.
A big hospital in my area still uses sun ray 2 devices pretty much everywhere with windows 10 connections. Their IT guy once gave me two of them for free sealed and never used
Amazing. I had a feeling there were still Sun Rays running out there.
This is super awesome! Great job. Haven't got time to mess with my sunray at the moment. Got done with a Dell competition lol. I may send a link to the linkedin for the reply lol... But yeah! Great video!
Windows 10 works! Imma definitely try it all out! When I have the time
Thanks! Let me know if you get that Sun Ray working!
Absolutely.
V240 was a favorite of mine late in its era. Performant, no fuss.
Hi !! You are my hero! I worked with this stuff and is impossible find sun/Solaris hardware cheap here in Brazil. Yesterday I brought a sun blade 100. R$500,00.. about $100,00.. includes a sun mouse and keyboard .
So, you are the guy that today does what I want to do, If I have access to the hardware.
Thanks! That's not too bad including the sun mouse and keyboard.
@@clabretro Yes, people charge a lot because is a "sun related" thing. Im also building my homelab rack. 2 x HP ML110 G7(Ill run esxi) 1 x 16TB HP microserver(xigmaNAS) 1x Dell powerconnect 2824, 1x Watchguard XTM5(running PFSENSE) everything behind an UPS with an external baterry module(max 1 hour on batteries).
very nice! yeah sellers really inflate prices just because something has the Sun logo on it.
keep up the good work!
thanks! more on the way.
Now if only a wild @NCommander would appear...
NCommander would've gotten that thing working 😂
Right? 😂
Though Meta/WinFrame is cursed in and of itself. They horsetraded to get other people to implement remote desktop for them, lmao.
"Here, have a copy of the NT source code, but only if we get to use your remote desktop technology!!" 😂
Yeah such a bizarre arrangement haha.
Ah interesting @Biomancer81! I definitely don't have kerberos running on that install.
I mean they were practically giving NT source away in the 90s, and that's kiiiiinda also how it got leaked, lmao
20:30 that is actually supposed to be like that. It is there to provide some springiness.
Since what makes screws not go loosen over time isn't a large amount of torque, but rather that the screw remains under tension. Since tension will prevent it from continuing to loosen at any meaningful pace. Unlike a stiff joint that only needs the screw to crack loose once and then its free to vibrate further. So by making the bracket have an integrated spring (of debatable quality) will ensure that the cards remains firmly attached in more vibration prone environments. (like during shipping)
Now, not all brackets have this feature. I guess it looks ugly to some users, confuses others, or perhaps just adds manufacturing cost. But when it is there, it is intentional and serves a useful purpose.
Lol i was once talking about a x86 add-in card for the first Macs with caddy CDrom drives, and how a apple store near me had a mac and PC in the store window, with some kind of setup to show the mac could boot itself, and then boot windows, quicker than a bare metal PC doing it, and one of the folks who built those cards reached out in a comment and shared a bunch of pictures
I thought it was a mass produced unit, turns out they only made about 500 all told. It wasn't a apple product, it was made by a company in the UK
Its one of the few things outside of exotic radio gear that you struggle to find info on, i don't think many survived
Sad to think about how much interesting stuff like that has been lost to time (at least for now).
@clabretro one oddity near me is a lot of odd older Dell PCs, Motorola phone stuff, and a few of the early iPhone prototypes, they were all built near me, with the exception of the iPhone that was maybe tested here? (In scotland)
A guy who reviews old PCs on here got a 30yo Dell still unused in its box from the Greenock factory and did a unboxing, I managed to send the video to a local group with a lot of the folk who worked at the plant, they were all chipping in seeing their initials on the QC stickers, or laughing at the squint lettering and tagging in the guy who worked that machine! 🤣 even the local MP was joining in, he'd been a union rep there, started him on the road to politics. Quite the trip down memory lane for them, and a ton of random info and questions answered for the video guy :)
@@mor4y ooh, was it anywhere near Greenock where IBM used to have their factory? Or, as your username implies, was it somewhere in Morayshire?
This is so cool.
Part 3 YAY
Man - epic series, I am really enjoying. But - fully off-topic. How many dreamcasts have you got? Why??
haha good question. 12 of them or something, it was an as-is ebay lot I couldn't pass up. came out to something like $13 usd each (basically 2008 thrifting prices). they're Japanese units but it's okay to run them on 120v for short game sessions. and the power supplies can be replaced or modded.
about half of them work just fine, the other half work but have broken gdroms. I fixed up 3 of them with gdemu units and noctua fan mods. had dreams of selling them but never got around to it.
@@clabretro epic
Good stuff!
Thanks!
I would give an AMD Geode a try in this one. It should have the same socket as this Athlon (462), and even less power consumption. This card looks very nice indeed.
Oh thanks, I'll check that out! I'm probably going to source a CPU replacement to see if that's the issue, so this is helpful.
Hi,
The Calvin that older iDRAC's refer to is Calvin from Calvin and Hobbies, at least that's the rumor I heard when I used to work at Dell.
Interesting! I'd believe that.
Try Solaris 8 , I do like the idea of setting up a zone like one person suggested and that could spawn a different series of videos . Zones were all the rage before docker came along .
Agreed, I'd like to cover zones in a video (I know next to nothing about them, so it'd be a fun excuse to learn). I did try on a physical machine in Solaris 8 with the same result, so I'm going to source a new CPU for the board.
28:56 I think you are dealing with HW issues. Last I remember using these, they were only compatible with IDE based Sparc-5 and Sparc-10 (maybe with Sparc 20/40) workstations and not with servers. I think you were supposed to connect a dedicated IDE drive directly to the card.
I wonder if it was a licencing issue because Windows NT 3.1 was ported to run on Intel x86 PC compatible, PC-98, DEC Alpha, and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms. Windows NT 3.51 was ported to UltraSPARC and PowerPC, but not released to the public. Would be interesting to get a copy of that Windows and then there wouldn't be a need for the external card. Of course NT 4.0 dropped support for UltraSPARC. I'm thinking running Linux KVM with Qemu and NT 3.51 😅
It's always interesting to think about how NT was developed with MIPS machines in mind (and sometimes on them, in fact).
I have a SunPCi IIIPro in my SunBlade 1500 (and had in a SB2500 before) and it works just fine with Solaris 10, even with the current system date. I suspect you are likely missing some patches. My system run relatively current KU 150400-48, SUNWspci3 version is 3.2.2. The SB1500 and SB2500 are very similar systems to your v240 so I would not expect any issue with the HW compatibility.
Thanks for that extra info, that's really helpful. Last night I got Solaris 8 and SUNWspci3 3.2.1 running on a V440 and it was exactly the same failure mode (x86 board wouldn't respond to the driver).
That, coupled with your info and the fact that I did see it work *once* on Solaris 10 leads me to believe it's hardware failure on the SunPCi board. I'm going to start by sourcing a new CPU.
@@clabretro one more idea: I seem to remember that SunPCi boards require some minimal version of OBP of its host, regardless of the Solaris version the host is running. The most recent version for most sun4u systems is OBP 4.30.4.a (which is what my SB1500 sports now), so maybe you need to update the firmware of your servers.
Oh thank you, I'll explore that too.
bought with 12 my first sunray 2 client. Had no idea what i need to run, thought i can throw a minimal linux on it, to connect via rdp to my windows server 2008 host, powered by a Sun X4200
There's a Linux version of the Sun Ray Server software but I haven't tried it.
Is this basically just like running rdesktop on Solaris from the thin client? Strange you needed the Solaris server in the middle, though maybe that's how sun planned to make money
Yeah the whole thing is kinda weird ha.
Wow, that system time error. I get the general utility of having a sanity-check for an admin accidentally typing, eg, 2096 instead of 2006... but how low is that threshold?!
I guess it's at least outside of the service life of the hardware it's installed in. Still, that other commenter mentioned a hospital using Sun Rays connecting to Windows 10. It's probably some other way of running Windows 10 rather than one of these PCi cards forced to upgrade, but I still wonder if that check in the setup software causes that hospital any issues.
Haha I know. Another comment mentioned patching the binary to skip that check entirely.
You need a Sun Ray 2N - laptop version of Sun Ray
I wish!
It took me two of your videos to recognize, it’s „PCi“ brand
Love your videos! I get such a heavy dose of nostalgia watching. I used to be a UNIX sysadmin back in the day. More Irix and AIX and less Solaris but still UNIX goodness makes me happy.
Thank you! I have an IBM System p5 I'm going to do a video on soon, we'll be diving into AIX.
Looking forward to it. I spent a big chunk of my career as a sysadmin and manager of sysadmin teams with IBM Power systems starting somewhere in the Power 5 era. Excelent machines.
@@0hN0es203what are your thoughts on Ibm I (as400/os400)?
now thats cool
I use the same standard for cursed computing that the Supreme Court used for obscenity:
I know when I see it.
It's a feeling
Over-engineered you say? What was the MSRP for those Sun servers back in the day?
Cursed indeed. Flashbacks to Apple Quadra 610 (68040 w/ 486sx board)
That v240 was around $7,000 USD list price fully equipped back when it came out. One of Sun's "cheaper" machines haha
That is cheaper than I would have imagined! Was that for one processor and a single stick of RAM, BYO storage, by any chance?@@clabretro or did they actually list devices in configurations that were not imaginary? First intro to *nix the 90's SPARCstations. Didn't see what they were running in the cursed 90's mishmash of server racks. Was a primarily unix and apple environment though x86 machines were around too. That poor sysadmiin.
This would've been the "large" configuration for $6,495: web.archive.org/web/20030621084857/store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml?catid=100055
2 processors and 2GB of ram.
Cheers! That is actually not too bad, especially compared to the 'small' 4/5U systems. Swings and roundabouts I suppose, especially when it comes to fast local storage. Don't know the state of SAN controllers at the time. Looking forward to next installment!
You should try to setup a Solaris 9 zone and pass the pci card into the zone, this way you don’t lose the work on sol10
Edit just make sure you use a whole root zone and not a sparse root zone
I was thinking about that actually! I haven't messed with zones at all but it'd be a good opportunity to try it out.
Zones are neat but I don't think they would resolve a driver incompatibility. Like with Linux containers, a Solaris 9 zone running under Solaris 10 would still use the Solaris 10 kernel.
@@roge0 unless you chose a whole root zone vs sparse, in pretty certain a whole root sol9 zone would work for this
I'd be very surprised if there's not some way to get terminal services running on Windows 2000 Pro, if it runs on the Server version. It would likely just involve tricking it to think it was the Server version, like I would trick Windows 7 Home.
That said, is there really any reason not to just install the Server edition? Would that game not work on the Server edition? Did you just not want to take the time, since you were already going to have to do a Windows install for the video anyway?
Yeah there's probably a way. It was just a total oversight on my part, I'm going to get the server edition on there eventually.
It would seem weird to me for it to get that far into Windows 11 but there not be some way to get it to work. Maybe you could change some settings to use the older login window, or even force it to use the Basic display adapter or something.
Hey. I just had the same issue with Windows 11 when was connecting to the Hyper-V VM using an enhanced mode (which I believe was just RDP). In order to fix this, I disabled Windows Hello security stuff, which was just a PIN-code login in my case
Oh thanks, I'll try that.
Oh you got bit by the parallel vs SATA CD drives.
open the Settings Menu go to system Remote desktop then Avanced in blue text then uncheck Use NLM box and apply it that will let you use the XP era login settings on win 10 and 11
24:03: Welcome to the future....and the past!
😹🤣
i just scored a free ps/2 vga keyboard and mouse kvm switch. i dont know if it still works or not. have to order some adapters.
A SunPCi III Pro would be good for running Windows on Solaris (SPARC).
Why would you put the cooler which killed one cpu for the replacement as well?
That's a new cooler, the machine originally only came with one.
You can change the Windows 10 Security NLM on the remote desktop Tap Uncheck the Secure connection box that's require a secure connection then apply that change
I worked for Sun and I worked on the Java Enterprise client that ran on the SunRay thin client. You're wrong about Windows being better.
Would the SunPCi even work on regular Windows PCs?
Unfortunately there aren't any drivers for Windows to interface with the card, though I suppose theoretically it'd be possible.
Now we have to find someone willing to write the code and make some truly cursed computing.@@clabretro
"2023? I don't believe you." 😂
Hey! Where's pt4?
The sunPci must be working on Solaris 10, i got it working in my Sun V890,
Maybe test it on your V440, i know they they must support it
I'll be trying it on the V440 for sure. The more I think about it the more I wonder if the CPU fried itself.
@@clabretro As I recall the Athlon XPs were the last CPUs that didn't come with real, decent thermal protection (as in, if it gets hot, it dials things back, rather than just hard-cutting power or blowing the CPU - CPUs afterwards all had something like that by default, based around how Intel implemented it). IIRC back in the day there was usually an insocket temp sensor on the mobo that was used, and the Athlons had a 'rough and ready' temp sensor on the CPU die - but not all mobos supported it (and I doubt the SunPCI would have).
So there's a pretty real risk that it toasted itself if the thermal paste/pads are past their useful life.
Of course, this potential disappointment leads to the more exciting question of "Is the CPU on the SunPCI socketed, and can the CPU be replaced with something faster?"
I ended up pulling the Athlon in a short patreon vid, and it's possible it fried, thermal situation wasn't great. Good news is I have a couple replacements on the way... so hopefully once that's sorted I'll have a "successful" video showing it working!
It did indeed have a temp sensor under the CPU. I'll also be testing the fan assembly before running any replacements to make sure that's all good.
I feel like I missed my prime. Modern day sysadmin is boring. I got started into sysadmining as soon as this stuff was already mostly out the door. I kinda want to hit up ebay now, but I'm sure my wife would murder me if any more old electronics come into the house! :)
Heh, boring is good. Yeah my wife is "impressed" with the Sun servers I have accumulated 😆
@@clabretroThe trick is to marry someone who wants to play with old Sun hardware as much as you do ;)
Hot damn!
You shouldn't touch the conductors on the DIMM's, ES shock _will_ kill them eventually.
I'm sitting on a small pile of older Sun servers. I'll happily send along what you'd like. Any interest?
Sure. You can reach out to the email in the channel's about page (might have to be on desktop to see it).
How about make video about Sun Fire server on x86 architecture?
I have an older video taking a look at an x86 Sun Fire: th-cam.com/video/9APesxcbtPc/w-d-xo.html
I can't believe it's 2023 either.
Sun stuff seems fun until you need drivers
So, people wanted windows. They just threw a full x86 computer on a PCI slot. Amazing hahaha
Alright
NLM was not arround during XP Days so disable it by doing what I said in prev Comment I'm a I.T professional from that era and still working so I know the correct settings
I saw that pile of yellow dreamcasts…what is your life?
ebay deal I couldn't pass up 😂
Cursed computing:
I use a Windows 10 laptop to rdp into a windows 7 Server VM (one core, sandy bridge, 4gb) in order to vnc to an ancient embedded PC running good ol' windows xp that runs a giant pharmaceutical freeze drier. And the other computer running it can't be remoted into because it's running Windows 2000. 🤮
very cursed
Calvin
cool now you get to do nothing with it. It's useless.